Just finished the game late last night. Overall, I really enjoyed the game and I think it is more than we could have hoped for with a Deus Ex prequel in this day and age. I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to continue on with their Deus Ex experience.

On that note though, I was still disappointed with some areas. The boss battles were just poorly designed in my opinion, and you hardly ever learn about the elite mercenaries you are fighting. Other than the intro, they hardly feel like part of the story at all. I am glad I had read the book earlier this year, having a better foundation for who they are compared to what the game offered me.

I am also not a fan of the single battery recharge mechanic, or the fact you can practically specialize in everything and be an all-in-one super soldier, whereas the first game made you really pick and choose your augments. I feel there is little replayability at this point, unless I simply want to play as a jerk or something, as I had practically all augments by the end of the game, excluding random things like recoil assist or some extra awareness augments.

Still though, despite some gripes I have, the game is solid overall and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Definitely recommended if you are a fan of the first game.

That's the beauty of the system. Just crouch and strafe in and out. Works just like a lean function. Of course I would prefer a REAL lean function, but it is a fact that you can play the game like that without imposing an artificial difficulty on yourself, compared to Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (which was effing awful) and Alpha Protocol, meaning the cover system is completely optional, so it works out for me.
The lack of a real sense of purpose. Right now you're just meandering about, trying to piece the puzzle together. Progress comes in fragments rather than an escalation into a climax. The sense of identity isn't as strong too. As JC, you're an elite agent whose mission is to eradicate terrorism, while AJ is just a private firm's security chief who, at times, feels a bit like an errand boy. In HR, the "sidequests" come in the form of quest kiosks, but in DX, they feel more natural - you run into them along the way, in a natural course of events rather than picking them out one by one amongst unique NPCs.

That's why I say HR lacks the sort of charm and brilliance that DX had. DXHR is still one hell of a game though, and it is very much a DX game, more than I can say for that POS Invisible War. Even though DXHR IMO doesn't surpass DX, it's still one of the finest games I've played of late. I only have two problems with the game: Steam (thanks to Steam, I had to wait 14 hours more to play due to being tricked by the download meter) and the constant stuttering. But hell, if a game can stutter this much and still make me play for 8 hours straight...damn it must be hitting all the right buttons.

The cover system is really useful for blindfiring grenades and mines. You can set up some very wicked traps that way.

One rechargeable bar is for balance purposes. I'm currently playing on hardest difficulty, using non lethal melee and not setting any alarms. It would become total cakewalk with two or even three bars. Extra bars you fill up with energy restoring items in tricky situations.

Anyone else encounter this bug?

Wonderful, just got a corrupted save bug :(

Entered my apartment, black screen...

Now the last Auto-save and the previous auto-save result in a black screen and the Quick save result into an insta-death... my most recent "real" save is from yesterday which means 5-6 hours of game play lost.

No, see, it doesn't provide balance, nor does it provide additional tactical options, it merely increases convenience. You still need to refill the batteries manually, whether you have two or five.

As this video demonstrates you can bind candy or other regenerative items to the hotbar and eat during combat to use as many actions as you like, regardless of how many batteries you have in total or how many are actually full when you enter combat.

Only the first battery ever regenerates. You're punishing yourself when you spend Praxis on additional batteries when it should be the other way around.

Thats very true..

Buying the regen rate upgrades is more worthwhile, in fact you can play just fine with 2 bars and not waste those 3 aug points on that..

Its a fairly absurd gameplay element all around. By having 1 bar regenerate but also refillable by food they basically punish us for saving charges. After all, every time you run around with just 1 bar you are essentially saving 1 candy each time it recharges...

More than one rechargeable bar would be convenient and wouldn't break the game at times when you aren't combo killing, but just waiting bar to fill up to kill the enemy in the next room.

Thanks for the video. It clearly shows how much easier the game would be if all bars recharged. On stealthy non lethal mode I could simply use cloak, run up to my targets hit q and move to the next room. You can't use cloak and melee at the same time with one energy bar, nor some other skills. Snacks are limited, and i believe he is used up all his items which was available to him at that time. As i mentioned in my previous post, snacks are for for tougher situations.

I feel cheated. I bought all 3 bars on impulse. Felt stupid when I realized that only a max of one bar could be recharged. Unless there's any ability that consumes 2 bars of energy at one go (is there? Not sure haven't played that far yet), it seems rather pointless to get more than 2 bars of energy.
One thing I like about HR is that resources are really limited - if you want to go Rambo, be prepared to conserve them. Likewise I just finished Detroit and I only have about 3 cans of painkillers.

I still have quite a fair amount of proenergy bars/boxes though, but I never felt compelled to consume them.

It's funny .

I just completed the first of the mandatory boss fights. I've been playing a sneaky, non-lethal build the whole time, so after numerous frustrating deaths my only viable option was to use cheap tactics. I couldn't even opt for non-lethal weapons here because the game shows the boss dying no matter what you did.

The developers have carefully included alternate paths for every situation and multiple solutions for every quest, making it truly worthy to bear the Deus Ex name, but then they suddenly snatch it away and give you a standard boss fight like any other game. The alternate boss solutions of the first game are gone. I can't understand their reasoning behind this.

That's what happens when you rely on FMV cutscenes to tell your story. It's too much work to render all of the different outcomes post-process. Machinima certainly worked out well for the original. DX:HR looks fantastic; I don't know why they chose not to utilize that.

Actually i think the only reason they did that is because they wanted to have a flashy boss-fight at main-points of the story.

Story wise there isn't a reason these 3 have to die and it even feels like alternate (non violent) solutions to those bosses were intentionally cut from the game, there is also the issue that if you'd KO them you couldn't actually take them with you, you are working for a company after all, not some UN agency.

The bosses are imo the only thing that detracts from the game, but thankfully theres only 3 of em..

I agree, I get the fact that they restrict the recharge rate to one bar but having the ability to upgrade to more than one bar (like I did) seems to be only a newbie mistake when in fact you can have unlimited bars with the quite generous energy bars they make available to you (I'm sitting on four bars but never have needed to recharge them as yet)